The space race started when America and Russia split the German rocket-scientist bounty at the end of World War II. It intensified and grew under the Cold War, and eventually subsided into mostly secret military activity as contradictions within both America and Russia sapped vitality from the race. This book covers the space race's 25 year run from the 50s to the 70s as a political entity in America under Eisenhower and Johnson and in Russia under Khrushchev.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 466-536) and index

Pulitzer Prize, History, 1986

PART I The Genesis of Sputnik -- Chapter 1 The Human Seed and Social Soil: Rocketry and Revolution -- CHAPTER 2 Political Rains and First Fruit:The Cold War and Sputnik -Conclusion -- PART II Modern Arms and Free Men: America Before Sputnik -- CHAPTER 3 Bashful Behemoth: Technology, the State, and the Birth of Deterrence -- CHAPTER 4 While Waiting for Technocracy: The ICBM and the First American Space Program -- CHAPTER 5 The Satellite Decision -- Conclusion

PART III Vanguard and Rearguard: Eisenhower and the Setting of American Space Policy -- CHAPTER 6 "A New Era of History" and a Media Riot -- CHAPTER 7 The Birth of NASA -- CHAPTER 8 A Space Strategy for the United States -- CHAPTER 9 Sparrow in the Falcon's Nest -- CHAPTER 10 The Shape of Things to Come -- Conclusion

PART IV Parabolic Ballad: Khrushchev and the Setting of Soviet Space Policy -- CHAPTER 11 Party Line -- CHAPTER 12 The Missile Bluff -- CHAPTER 13 Hammers or Sickles in Space? -- CHAPTER 14 Space Age Communism: The Khrushchevian Synthesis -- Conclusion -- PART V Kennedy, Johnson, and the Technocratic Temptation -- CHAPTER 15 Destination Moon -- CHAPTER 16 Hooded Falcons: Space Technology and assured Destruction -- CHAPTER 17 Benign Hypocrisy: American Space Diplomacy -- CHAPTER 18 Big Operator: James Webb's Space Age America -- CHAPTER 19 Second Thoughts -- Conclusion

PART VI The Heavens and the Earth: The First Twenty-five Years -- CHAPTER 20 Voyages to Tsiolkovskia -- CHAPTER 21 The Quest for a G.O.D. -- CHAPTER 22 A Fire in the Sun

Pulitzer Prize for History, 1986

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews